Git in tha Cellar, Ma! A Storm's a Comin' !

As most people can tell you, there's always the inevitable jokes made about your name. People named Gloria are probably so sick of the 1982 one-hit Laura Branigan wonder with the same name. If you have an embarrassing last name, you've probably heard every imaginable crude joke there is (An unfortunately named veterinary student I met once took her last name in stride. She had another friend with a similarly unfortunate moniker. "All we need now," she told me ,"is one other vet--maybe someone named 'Gay'? Then we could open a practice called 'Gay, Butt and Cox'"). Everyone somewhere has some song with their name in it, that some unfeeling clever stranger belts out when they're introduced to you (unless you are someone with unusually creative parents, in which case, you usually have a different sort of embarrassing label problem). I've always counted myself lucky, as there are only two songs that involve my name, both somewhat obscure, and my name really rhymes with very few things. But the spector of my shortened name has loomed. Now, I don't mind being called "em," generally. I answer to it; it just sort of happened over the years, an organic change. But I could see as my friends and family hit their child bearing years that it was coming. And, as of August 16th, it's official. I AM "AUNTIE EM."

Too late, it's just too late to avoid the image: Clara Blandick, crotchety and hairbunned, no-nonsense, trying to keep that girl Dorothy in line-- a dear girl , but foolish like all young people are. Since I can never free myself, I have embraced it. Hmmm. I'm not sure where we'll put the pigs, though. Come to find, I'm excited to be an auntie. I get the good bits--the presents, the holiday visits. And you never know, maybe there will be cousins for her to play with, down the road. Funny what babies do to otherwise sane people--I've already sent her my favorite book from when I was small, and she's not even learned about focusing her eyes yet! I am often pessimistic about the future of humankind, and yet I cannot regret anywhere in my heart that she has been born. Welcome to you, niecekin. Come up and visit sometime--I'll let you slop the hogs and feed the chickens. Just watch out for that Toto dog--he likes to run off!

My niece. Pretty disgusting, eh? I'm smitten.